Tuesday - December 26, 2006

Book Review

It isn’t often that the NY Times and I agree on anything. In fact, this may be a first. I finally got around to reading Lawrence Wright’s book “The Looming Tower: The Road to 9/11” (Amazon - $16.76, 480 pp. Knopf, ISBN 037541486X). My advice to all of you is simple: get this book, read it, read it again, think about it, read it again. You won’t be disappointed.

Wright presents the facts in a very readable history of the rise of modern radical Islam from Egyptian Sayyid Qutb’s impressions of America, which he toured in the 1940’s to the subsequent rise of his “disciple”, Ayman al-Zawahiri in Egypt and the formation of Islamic Jihad, the predecessor of Al-Qaeda.

The descriptions of Osama Bin Laden and his path to becoming a terrorist leader are an eye-opener, particularly the complicity of the Saudis in his rise. Wright contrasts that excellently with the story of John O’Neill at the FBI and his determined efforts to stop the terrorists only to die at the WTC in the attack of 9/11.

Wright did not come across to me as an apologist for Islam as the NY Times seems to believe (on this we disagree). I felt that this was an excellently researched book that everyone who would understand the enemies of modern civilization should read. In fact, it should be required reading for everyone involved in the War On Terror or those of us who stand to lose everything if the enemy wins this one.

“When Mohamed Atta and his four Saudi confederates commandeered a Boeing 767 and steered it into the north tower of the World Trade Center, they began a story that still consumes us nearly five years on, and one that seems, on bad days, to promise war without end.

But the events of Sept. 11, 2001, were in many ways less the start of a tale than the end of one, or at least the climax of one, begun many years before in many different precincts: in the middle-class suburbs of Cairo, in the mosques of Hamburg, in Jidda, in Islamabad, in the quiet university town of Greeley, Colo.

In its simplest terms, this is the story of how a small group of men, with a frightening mix of delusion and calculation, rose from a tormented civilization to mount a catastrophic assault on the world’s mightiest power, and how another group of men and women, convinced that such an attack was on the way, tried desperately to stop it.

What a story it is. And what a riveting tale Lawrence Wright fashions in this marvelous book. “The Looming Tower” is not just a detailed, heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11, written with style and verve, and carried along by villains and heroes that only a crime novelist could dream up.

It’s an education, too — though you’d never know it — a thoughtful examination of the world that produced the men who brought us 9/11, and of their progeny who bedevil us today. The portrait of John O’Neill, the driven, demon-ridden F.B.I. agent who worked so frantically to stop Osama bin Laden, only to perish in the attack on the World Trade Center, is worth the price of the book alone. “The Looming Tower” is a thriller. And it’s a tragedy, too.

In the nearly five years since the attacks, we’ve heard oceans of commentary on the whys and how-comes and what-it-means and what’s nexts. Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker — where portions of this book have appeared — has put his boots on the ground in the hard places, conducted the interviews and done the sleuthing. Others talked, he listened. And so he has unearthed an astonishing amount of detail about Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Muhammad Omar and all the rest of them. They come alive.”

-- NY TIMES Book Review

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/26/2006 at 12:01 PM   
Filed Under: • Middle-East •  
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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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